Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Today Mark Sturtevant is back with some lovely wide-angle photos. Mark’s IDs and comments (links are also his) are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:
A specialty area of macrophotography is wide angle macrophotography. Here, a subject can be seen in extreme closeup while its broader surroundings are also in view since the lens is also a wide angle lens. The best-known wide angle macro lens is one made by Laowa, but that lens is rather expensive. But there is a near clone of that lens made by Opteka—the Opteka 15mm f/4) which retails for just over $100. So. . . I bought the Opteka. It took a while to figure out how to get along with it since these kinds of lenses are very challenging, but I can definitely say that this is the most fun lens that I own. Here are some wide angle macro pictures.
This is a ground-level view of my favorite spot to look for aquatic fishing spiders on lily pads. None were here that day. You can see that the depth of focus is pretty amazing when stopped down all the way to f/32 (!):
Views up a tree are always interesting. This lens encourages one to look for unique angles. The picture is focus-stacked from several pictures:
Mushrooms near a forest trail:
But of course, photographing spiders and insects is especially fun (for me). Here is a nursery web spider (Dolomedes tenebrosus), which is one of the biggest and scariest spiders around here. I could trust that she would not leave her babies in the web nursery, though, even though the lens is practically touching her:
European praying mantis (Mantis religiosa). I rather like the solar flares that often turn up in this lens. There is a short lens hood, but it’s pretty useless because the working distance is often just a few millimeters for wide angle macro lenses.
If anyone wishes to learn more about this kind of photography, one cannot do better than watch this delightful review from the great Thomas Shahan. He concentrates mainly on the Laowa wide angle macro lens, but it really is like the Opteka model as far as I am aware.
Mark Sturtevant sent me these photos last October, and I’ve been remiss in not posting them. (BTW, readers, how about giving yours truly a gift of photos for the site as a Coynezaa present?) Mark’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Here are more pictures of arthropods. Well, mostly arthropods.
Deep in a remote forest, a strange but also new kind of moth suddenly dropped onto a leaf in front of me. This is the dark-spotted palthis, Palthis angulalis.
Next up is a broad-headed bug nymph (Alydus eurinus). These Hemipterans are seed feeders, but the nymphs are great ant mimics. In keeping with that, they are also very erratic and darty in their movements. Different species resemble different ant models. This one looks like a common species of carpenter ant.
Here is a differential grasshopper nymph, Melanoplus differentialis. Very common and ordinary, although I really like photographing grasshoppers.
The tiny insect shown next is a male minnow mayfly (Callibaetis sp.), with its very weird compound eyes that are thought to be used to look for females. The picture is focus stacked from pictures taken by hand on the dining room table.
The caterpillar shown next is kind of beautiful, but it is not welcome! This is the larva of the Lymantria dispar, a.k.a. the gypsy moth (although that common name is now being retired, and I have not seen a new name for it). Introduced into this country in the 1800s, it has been slowly migrating westward. I began to see them a couple years ago, and now they are getting obnoxiously common. The reason they are bad news is because gypsy moth caterpillars can become highly numerous at times, and do severe damage to a wide range of hardwood tree species on which they feed. I have more pictures of their different life stages to share later (unfortunately).
Continuing with caterpillars, here is a tiny and rather weird Geometrid larva that is called the horned spanworm (Nematocampa resistaria).
One day I foolishly waded out into a sandy river with the “big camera” to take this rather atmospheric picture of bluet damselflies. Damselflies in this group are tricky to identify, but it looks like a mixed group here. I’ve tentatively identified the three in the middle to be azure blueets (Enallagma aspersum), and the ones on the far left and right as skimming bluets (E. geminatum). There is a tiny squabble going on at far right, where a male skimming bluet has landed behind a mated female azure bluet who is being guarded by her mate. The female is saying “buzz off!” to the cheeky male by beating her wings and arching her abdomen.
The spider shown in the next picture came as a present to be unwrapped. There was this leaf, neatly woven together with silk into a distinct ball. I carry scissors with me, and this was used to carefully cut open the leaf to reveal the darker form of one of our nursery web spiders (Pisaurina mira) with a freshly made egg sac. Not nearly as big as the other species I see around here, which is scary big, but this one had a leg span over two inches. I am holding the leaf in my hand, knowing that she will be very reluctant to run out of her retreat.
I later carefully fastened the leaf deep into a bush so that the budding family was well protected.
And finally, deep in a remote forest, I came across a creepy kind of fungus that is appropriately known as “dead man’s fingers” (Xylaria polymorpha). Every time I see these, I am reminded of a story related to me about some parents who were on a nature hike with their young daughter. They came across this fungus protruding from the ground at the daughters’ feet, and so they excitedly pointed it out and said “Oh, look! Dead man’s fingers!” It did not go over well.
Here’s the first installment of rainforest photos from reader Athayde Tonhasca Júnior. Click on the photos to enlarge them, and his notes and IDs are indented:
You asked for readers’ photos, so here’s a tour through the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
Today I’m going to gather the few singletons, doubletons, and tripletons sent in by readers. Although I like sets of photos of ten to a dozen or so, I do appreciate a good single wildlife photo. Here are some from diverse (I mean by that “different”) readers. Their captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Do sent in your photos, please; we’re running low again.
First, fungi by Alexandra Moffat:
White tree mushroom, Tremella fuciformis (?), New Hampshire hardwoods. When sunlit, an eye-catching white beacon in the woods. Not sure of the ID, an awful lot of similar fungi!!! Huge fungi year around here.
From Ken Phelps, who calls this a “Roswell pear”.
Friends on Gabriola Island, just off Nanaimo, gave me a few pears last weekend. The Gulf Islands have an underlying vibe of getting-a-bit-geriatric woo, so it’s entirely possible that a Grey got waylaid in a New Mexican harmonic convergence and accidentally popped out here. Or something.
From Christopher Moss, “Apple Thief”.
I was just thinking my Russets are ripe enough to pick this weekend, when I see those scoundrels have got there first!
And from Joe McClain in Williamsburg, Virginia:
We had a mother Procyon lotor give birth to quadruplets here in the Blue Ridge of Virginia. My daughter once saw them walking, all in a line, at dusk. She involuntarily exclaimed at the cuteness of it all. The mother stopped abruptly to look at her, starting a chain reaction of raccoon-bumping. These creatures soon found our peach trees. So we named the mother Peaches and the babies Pitt, Fuzz, Pie and Cobbler. The one photo is of Pitt, Fuzz and Pie regaling themselves upon our peach crop. Cobbler separated from the rest of the family rather early and I think that is him or her on the deck of my office. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the family, but it’s a tough world around here for raccoons, with foxes, coyotes, dogs and cars taking their toll and farmers resenting attacks on chickens, etc.
Then there is a praying mantis on the siding near my beer cooler. Don’t know species.
And a stunned Sitta carolinensis. This white-breasted nuthatch hit the window of my office. I went out and picked it up, folding its wings back. He seemed just a bit dazed, so I put him down on the deck. After a minute of looking around, he hopped a couple times, then flew off.
I have a queue of photos, so if you haven’t seen yours yet, please be patient. And of course I can always use more.
Today’s photos are by Tony Eales from Queensland. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
I’m headed to the outback next week so with luck I’ll have some cool things to share when I get back. For now I have a grab bag of reasonably recent shots of this and that.
I’ll start with a new mimic for me. This is one of several jewel beetles that mimic the presumably very unpalatable lycid beetles. This is the most widespread species being found in every mainland state of Australia, mainly across the southern half: Castiarina rufipennis.
These are tiny Monomorium sp. known as Timid Ants. But they’re struggling mightily with this seed.
One of our common species of fish that lives in both brackish and fresh water. Pseudomugil signiferPacific Blue Eye. They are a popular aquarium fish here and a member of the colourful family of Gondwanan and mostly Sahulian freshwater fish Melanotaeniidae, known commonly as Rainbowfish. Unfortunately, these blue-eyes are being driven out by the imported Gambusia mosquitofish. These Central American fish are livebearing and eat the scattered eggs of rainbowfish like Blue eyes as well as occupying the same niche.
As everyone should know by now, I love spiders. However, I’m also fascinated by the fungi that prey on them. This is probably Gibellula sp.
Finally, an orchid I’ve seen plenty of times in the rainforest near me but never caught flowering before. It is an epiphyte, Plectorrhiza tridentata, the Common Tangle Orchid.
Today’s batch is quite diverse in content, and comes from reader Leo Glenn, whose notes are indented. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
I haven’t been able to take many photos lately, and my archive is fairly disorganized, so here is a somewhat random collection of photos. The only thing tying them together, really, is that they were all taken within walking distance of my house in western Pennsylvania. I’ve also included a “macro” photo that you could use as a “What am I?” quiz, if you so desire. The subsequent photo is the reveal. [JAC: I’ll put it below the fold.]
Gray treefrog (Dryophytes versicolor), so named because they can change color from gray to green or brown. Far more often heard than seen, this one was down near the ground and politely lingered long enough for me to take its picture:
Another organism with the species name versicolor, the Turkey Tail mushroom (Trametes versicolor)
Yellow morel (Morchella esculenta), from my secret morel patch:
Our mulberry tree had a bumper crop this year, which attracted many bird species, including this Black-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus erythropthalmus), seen here, though, on a neighboring red maple (Acer rubrum).
Some of the most fascinating observations in biology, at least to me, involve the comandeering of one species by a parasite, who take the host over, changing it in a way that facilitates the parasite’s own reproduction. “Zombie ants“, infected by a behavior-altering fungus, are one example, and some people think that the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, which humans get from cat feces, changes the behavior of rats when it infects them, making the rats lose their evolved fear of cats. The infected rats then are more readily eaten by cats, thus facilitating the reproduction of the protozoan, which becomes infectious when it gets into the cats and exits through their feces. Any mutant protozoan with the tendency to make rats less afraid of cats will be more likely to be passed on, which of course is positive natural selection. But in neither that case nor the case of zombie ants infected with fungus do we know exactly how the parasite commandeers the host and changes their behavior. Working that out will be a fascinating task.
Today we have another fungus that affects its host in a way detrimental to that host but good for the fungus. The system is described in a new paper in Fungal Genetics and Biology (click on screenshot below, full reference at the bottom), or find the pdf here. There’s also a summary in Scientific American.
Now there are a couple of cases known of fungi that actually take over a plant host’s development and produce pseudoflowers that attract insects. Those pseudoflowers, while made of plant material, are also covered with fungal hyphae. The fungus also somehow induces the plant to produce a nectarlike substance. Both the pseudoflower and nectar attract pollinating insects, who instead of getting pollen get covered with fungal spores. The spore-covered pollinators then move to a new infected plant. This is a way the fungus manages to disperse its genes and also (some fungi have “sexes” or mating types) effect matings with another fungus on another plant. It’s a form of fungal reproduction, just as pollination is a form of plant reproduction.
In today’s case we have something a bit different: the fungus, when infecting the plant, itself assumes the form of a flower that looks remarkably like the host flower. It also develops pigments that are known to attract insects, including those in the UV light spectrum. Finally, the fungus appears to emit volatile chemicals that are identical to some chemicals of the host flower that attract bees.
Did I mention that the fungus also sterilizes the host plant (a flowering grass), so that the fungus doesn’t compete with the grass flowers for pollinators?
Click to read:
The two species of grass that the fungus infects were found in western Guyana, and are “yellow-eyed grasses,” Xyris setigera and X. surinamensis. Both are infected with the fungus Fusarium xyrophlium, a new species described by these authors. When it infects the grasses, the fungus sterilizes them, so that they produce no flowers or mature fruit, and the fungus sets up a systemic infection of the grass plant. Infections are patchy in Guyana; not all grasses have them and most grasses don’t.
After a plant has been infected for a certain time, the fungal hyphae grow into a “pseudoflower” at the grass tip that is a remarkable mimic of the grasses’ own flowers. Have a look at this figure from the paper. The first three photos show the fungus “flower”, and only the last shows the grass’s own natural flower. Again, the faux flower in the three photos at the left is made of pure fungal hyphae; it’s not made of plant cells “directed” by the fungus to assume the configuration of a flower, as in other cases.
(From the paper): Fig. 1. Comparison of Xyris flower and Fusarium xyrophilum pseudoflowers collected in the Cuyuni-Mazaruni region of Guyana in 2010. (A) Young yellow-orange pseudoflower produced by F. xyrophilum emerging at tip of cone-like spike of Xyris surinamensis. (B) Mature pseudoflower of F. xyrophilum enveloping the entire X. surinamensis spike. (C) Longitudinal section of X. surinamensis spike showing partial fruit development in center and pseudoflower of F. xyrophilum. (D) Healthy yellow flower of X. surinamensis shown for comparison, with lateral petals and prominent erect hairlike staminodes. Scale bar: A–D = 5 mm. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Do the faux flowers attract insects? Yes, they were observed to attract small bees, though the flowers weren’t watched very long.
Do the bees carry spores that they get from trying to extract nectar from the fungus? We don’t know. The fungus is “self-sterile”, having different mating types, so it’s likely that these false flowers have evolved to not only disperse the fungus, but to facilitating its mating, since the spore-laden bee would likely be duped again and, in so doing, bring together two spores that could effect a mating.
Do the same bees pollinate the real flowers and the fake ones? That’s essential, for the mimicry involves duping the regular pollinators. Again, we don’t know. Note, though, that the faux flower has the same general shape and color as the real flower.
It’s interesting to note that, besides sterilizing the grass, the fungus seems to have no other detrimental effect on it. That’s what the fungus “wants,” of course, for its propagation depends on not killing off the grass, which is a perennial.
Bees not only see in the visible light spectrum, but also in the UV. The authors extracted pigment compounds from the fungus and found that there were indeed pigments in them that fluoresce in the UV spectrum. Thus bees could see more than just what we do. But we don’t know how the faux fungus flowers look to the bees, or whether bee vision makes the faux flowers resemble the real grass flowers. (There are many unanswered questions raised by this study.)
Finally, the authors looked at the volatile compounds of the fungus and flowers to see if they had anything in common; that is, was the fungus mimicking the odor as well as the appearance of the flower? Because the authors couldn’t get back to Guyana because of the pandemic, they used a related flower, X. laxifolia from North Carolina, compared to the lab-cultured fungus. Gas chromatography revealed only one volatile compound in common between the fungus and the grass flower: 2-ethylhexanol. This compound, however, is known to be a fairly powerful attractant of bees.
While many questions remain hanging, they can in principle be answered, and this paper describes a unique system: another weird way evolution works. Here are some of the questions remaining:
a.) Did the fungus independently evolve its ability to produce faux flowers on both species of grass? (I would guess not.)
b.) Do the pollinators really move spores between infected grasses? (My guess would be yes; why else would the fungus evolve such an elaborate ability to make mimetic flowers?)
c.) What it is about infecting a grass that makes the fungus suddenly able to form flower-like shapes? Does some compound or gene in the grass itself induce the fungus to do this?
d.) How similar does the grass flower appear to the fungus “flower” to the eye of a bee?
e.) What other compounds of the fungus “flower” attract insects, and are they similar to odorants from the grass flower?
As Orgel’s Second Rule of Biology states, “Evolution is cleverer than you are.” And in this case it’s been very clever!
Arthur Williams sends us a rarity here: pictures of fungi. These come from Australia, and we have no identifications. Arthur’s notes are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:
How about a few fungi?
All of these were spotted on a single short walk from Durras North to Depot Beach on the south coast of NSW. In fact most were seen within 500 metres or so from Point Upright. They ranged from tiny (the orange fungus on the tree) through to 20cm tall, and with caps up to 30cm diameter.
Other than that, I don’t know anything about them. I was just fascinated by the variety of forms, sizes and colours to be found in such a small area of bush. I am however hoping to improve my fungus knowledge at a workshop at Mulligan’s Flat in Canberra in May!
Today’s reader photos are of fungi, and come from reader Rik Gern, who adds an artsy interpretation. His captions and ID’s are indented.
Here are some submissions for your Readers’ Wildlife Pictures section.
I’ve held off on sending these for a while because I’m having a devil of a time identifying genus and species. Believe me, I’ve spent hours searching images for potential matches, but if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that the world of mushrooms is vast. Talk about your endless forms most beautiful!
I’ll make a stab at the genera of three of the four types represented here:
The first two look like they might be of the genus Panaeolina (foenisecli?). They were growing in rotting leaves in central Texas in the autumn on a misty day, if that helps with identification.
The third picture was taken on the same day in the same location, a few feet from the first mushrooms, but these were growing from a fallen tree limb. Until I tried to look up the Latin binomials I had thought of them as cremé brûlée mushrooms, but I seriously doubt that’s what they’re called. My best guess is Galerina marginata.
The big spongy looking mushrooms were also found in central Texas, although these were taken on a cool Spring morning after a few rainy days, and were growing in the grass. They look like some kind of Boletus. They were partially covered with a soft white mold which is hard to see in the pictures, but looked like snow or frosting from other angles. A fungal fungal infection? One of the mushrooms looks like it has a bite taken out of it, but I wonder what would leave marks like that?
The pictures in the next set were taken in northern Illinois in the fall. These mushrooms were growing on a tree. I apologize for not being able to come up with a latin name for even the genus, but after many searches, the only comparable images I could find were stock photos that didn’t provide any information.
The Boletus with the “bite” taken out of it is the basis for the first–I don’t know what you’d call it–digital distortion, “Necro Borg: Resisting Assimilation”. I worked on this as news of COVID 19 was just starting to spread, and I guess I was picking up on a sense of doom and gloom and sort of an ambient ennui. It kind of gives me the creeps and I’m glad I’m not feeling that way now! (Exercise is your friend!)
The close-up of the mushrooms from Illinois is the basis for the second digital distortion, “Virus X: The Fear Factor”. This was also done right as the world was starting to shut down and there was this feel of a spreading biological menace and a spreading social isolation to combat the menace. The other thing spreading seemed to be fear, for some fear of the coronavirus, for some fear of the containment and isolation, for many, both. Maybe there are two pandemics, one biological and one psychological?
